Daily News from New York, New York • 317

3 55 CO it's Daddy Mich Again AKE HEART, all you undersized folks irked by Randy Newman's musical twit, "Short People." for you have a Superman of your very own in Mickey Rooney. The mighty mite and wife Jan are expecting their first bambino, and to boggle the mind with tall numbers, Mickey is 58 and already boasts 10 offspring from his seven previous marriages Even so fulltime a funster as Jack Carter is prone to wax serious once in a while, though not for long. Jack got into some heavy political talk the other night at Onde's on E. 48th and host Albert Rotonde kiddingly asked if by any chance he was related to President Carter. "Could be," was the comedian's retort.

"What did Jimmy change his name from?" Remember the Persian Room, the night club in the Plaza Hotel? It's been shuttered a long while, but it's about to reopen this time as a ladies' apparel shop, Maison Mendessole, run by the same people who run an exclusive shop of the same name in San Francisco Producer Sam Spiegel, who doesn't like to talk about his projects until the script is written, would only say at Nickel's that his next will be "the biggest thing I have ever done." Quite a statement, considering that would make it bigger than "Lawrence of Arabia," "Bridge Over the River Kwai" and "The Afri- can Queen." Okay, all you lovers of Italian food take heart. A 1 Japanese researcher, Toshio Nakagawa has, after 19 years of dedicated research, come up with a "new" garlic clove. He claims it has the same look, the same taste and the same smell as the real thing but it doesn't affecfthe breath at all Sid Bernstein was Yaphet Kofto, Harvey Keitel and Richard Pryor: cooking up a "Blue Collar" scheme Kris Kristofferson Mickey Rooney abruptly to a more serious tone. Still, the movie has a crude energy which propels it right along. Of the three men, Zeke (Richard Poor) is a happily married black with three children at home and three more listed as IRS deductions.

Jerry (Harvey Keitel) is a Polish-American with two jobs, a wife, and a kid who desperately needs braces. And Smokey (Yaphet Kotto) is a black ex-con, a big, burly man who lives the life of a swinging bachelor owing money to loan sharks. It is at a cocaine party at Smokey's house where the three decida that the one way out of their financial troubles is to rob the safe at their local union hall. Needless to say, they bungle the job. Instead of any real loot, they wind up with a list of IOU's for the union's loan sharking.

It is when they threaten to expose the union that they discover that their very lives are on the line. The performances are all strong. Pryor is allowed to run a little wild but he manages, in the end to be quietly sympathetic as the one who chooses, in spite of his conscience, to work for the union. Keitel. who always gives the impression he's about to explode, is able to convey his character's sense of helpless rage.

Kotto is both tough and intelligent as Smokey who has to face the most agonizing death. Harry Bellaver is also extremely effective as the union leader who hides his sinister thoughts behind a guise of fraternalistic concern. "Blue Collar" is a gritty, hard-driving movie and one that, for all its flaws, is not easily forgotten. MoviesBy KATHLEEN CARROLL BLUB' COLLAR. Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel.

Directed by Paul Schrader. At me Rivoli, Trans-Lux East and Mth St. East Theaters. Runnim time: 1 hour, SO minutes. Rated R.

"Blue Collar" exposes the plight of three downtrodden workers on a Detroit assembly line who, in trying to escape their pressing debts and routine jobs, discover that there is no way out of their stifling existence. Not only must they contend with bosses who drive them mercilessly and extract their daily pound of flesh, they are oppressed equally by their corrupt union which treats them like more cogs in the machinery and uses pressure tactics to keep them in line. Just as the machines keep grinding out cars, they grind down men along with their modest dreams and aspirations. Written by Paul Schrader, who uses a continuous barrage of four-letter words and his now familiar abrasive style, Collar" seethes with honest indignation. Schrader has succeeded mostly in penetrating the self-contained, depressingly limited world of the blue-collar worker, a world where television dominates the home and beer drinking and bowling nights provide the only outlets.

But as a first-time director, Schrader shows some uncertainty. He starts by doing a light-hearted caper movie before shifting much too up at Abe's Steak House on 74th St. and Third Ave. to have dinner with the owner the other night, but the place was so crowded, Abe Margolies leaned over to Sid and said, "How can I take a table here? I got customers waiting!" So he and Sid put on their coats and went next door to eat at Tre Amici There's a very funny new act in town, and they're playing to plenty of laughs these nights at Trude Heller's. Their name is Monteith and Rand, and the improvisation bits they do defy description.

They'll be at that Village spot Sixth Ave. and Ninth St.) for the next four weeks. them. When they get to be big names, youll feel like Columbus did when he sighted San Salvador It may seem like strange casting, but the noted jazz pianist Barbara Carroll has signed to tour 11 major European cities on a bill that toplines Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge. Dick Haymes whose mother is actress Joanne Dru (and whose father was a pretty good singer once) will take over the piano and nuke starting tonight at Rick's Place, York Ave.

and 84th St. It's his first time appearing in New York Robert Fredricks is doing a little boasting around the Gaslight Club, where he is president. The theater he established in the club in Jllinois is thriving, Just as he predicted. He's also a man who has invested in 90 Broadway shows, 65 of which were hits, to a profit tune of $1.5 million. And that's a mighty pretty tune, all right Saint Subber, who produced the likes of "Kiss Me Kate" and "The Tenth Man" on Broadway, has folded his New York tent and moved out to San Francisco, where he'll be working as perhaps the Broadway producer who is farthest away from the Great White Way Henny Youngman, who'll lead the Senior Citizen segment of the March of Dimes Walkathon April 16, is peddling his memoirs.

Will they be called "Take My Life, Please?" Jackie Gayle, Frank Sinatra's new favorite comic, opens with 01' Blue Eyes at Harrah's Tahoe Feb. 24, while his former funnyman, Pat Henry, is working alone these nights at Dangerfield's. Some TV networks have been approached to lay out some additional funding to complete Richard Condon's "Winter Kills" movie, which got started about a year ago with a cast that included Elizabeth Taylor, Anthony Perkins and John Huston, and ground to a halt when the money ran out. That makes an awful lot of unreleased Elizabeth Taylor films, if you count "A Little Night Music" and "The Driver's Seat," neither of which has seen the inside of a movie house Actress Donna Theodore thought she was being clever when she showed up for a dinner date at the Iperbole Monday night on skis! But when she got to the check room with them, she found three other pairs had gotten there before her. MFBse Beltsy': en ffHssff ffiire off so ffifftn design a new economy-sized, pollution-free car.

but who really has designs on the family business as well as Loren Hardeman's great-granddaughter. If these characters are completely forgettable, it is only because "The Betsy" is such a confused jumble of flashbacks and flashforwards. It appears to have been spliced together by an auto mechanic. The actors, with the exception of Lesley -Anne Down, who plays a glamorous bitch with great aplomb, all look Gainfully embarrassed as well they should, considering the ridiculous dialogue they are forced to utter. Laurence Olivier, as the auto magnate, spends the entire picture searching for the proper American accent and trying to master a Midwestern twang.

At times, he sounds like a cross between Walter Brennan and Billy Carter. And yet he also insists upon pronouncing the word "car" like a Bostonian. What makes this movie especially painful is that it exposes this brilliant actor at his very worst in a performance totally out of control. One final word of advice. If you are in the mood for a good movie, make sure "The Betsy" is not in your future.

It is the movie equavalent of the Edsel. Kathleen Carroll THE BETSY, Laurence Olivier, Robert Duvall. Directed by Daniel Petrie. At showcase Theaters. Running time: 2 hours, minutes.

Rated R. Here, for what it's worth, is the lineup of characters in "The Betsy." a movie based on one of Harold Robbins' sleazy best sellers. First, there is Loren Hardeman the 86-year-old chairman of the board of the family controlled Bethlehem Motor who has been known to bed down any woman who came within his reach, including his own daughter-in-law. There is Sally Hardeman, the neglected wife of Loren Hardeman Jr. (who.

by the way. was a closet homosexual who saw fit to end his life by shooting himself in his own car. there being no better place for a Hardeman to commit suicide). She has been hopelessly infatuated with her father-in-law since she spotted him making love to his French maid. Next comes Loren Hardeman 3d, the stiff-necked president of Bethlehem Motors, who has hated his grandfather since he spotted him in bed with his mother.

And last, but hardly least, there is Angelo Perrino, a former race car driver who's been hired to.